Goldington Family Centre

Goldington Family Centre manages a small group of children’s centres. The group was inspected as a group in October 2013 under the relatively new arrangements for group inspections of centres and were judged to be inadequate. Much of the focus of the inspectors’ comments on areas for improvement was on the perceived lack of data, information and evidence to enable effective needs assessment and target setting, early identification of the needs of the children in most need and tracking of the impact of services and activities.

We provided some short term focussed support to put in place to:

• Good data and information sharing and gathering processes and impact evaluation (including tracking of families referred on to training and education).
• Create an evidence led ethos across the group and support centre staff to understand the use of data and evidence in demonstrating the impact on outcomes for families in their reach areas and their own role in gathering data, information and evidence.
• Identify gaps around data and evidence gathering in partnership arrangements, and develop mechanisms to address them.
• Work with the LA around collecting data, identify need, target services and demonstrate impact on the families most in need of support.

We were delighted that after our support Goldington achieved a ‘Good’ in their most recent inspection.